Entwined

Yesterday was not your typical day around here. I went outside to feed the animals in the evening and heard the neighbors dogs back at the pond barking hysterically at something or someone. After listening to this for five minutes I decided to go investigate. When they saw me coming they ran off and there, in the pond, was a whitetail buck with his head down in the water. Wondering why he was just standing there I kept walking towards him. That's when I discovered he had locked antlers with another buck and they were both in the pond, the other deer was dead. The live buck was tired, I could tell he'd been wrestling for hours and he could hardly keep his head above the water.

I had no idea what to do. The pond is not on our property so I jumped in the car and drove to the neighbors behind us who do own the pond. Nobody was home so back home I went. I couldn't just watch this poor deer drown so I went down to the pond to see if I could help him. He didn't have any fight left, he was barely standing and shaking in the cold water. I rolled up my pants and waded into the pond, grabbed his antlers and attempted to pull him and his dead nemesis ashore. Turns out two bucks are very heavy.....imagine that. He wasn't fighting me but he wasn't helping either. I managed to keep his head above the water and pull him in a bit but I could tell it was a loosing battle. There wasn't much else I could do so I patted him on the head and told him to hold on.

I decided to drive back to the neighbors and put a post it note on their front door but managed to catch them on the road instead. The guy is a hunter and I knew he'd be able to help the deer somehow, even if that just meant a bullet. He and his wife jumped on their four wheeler and were able to drag both the deer out of the pond with a rope. The one was still alive when I went home at dark. I have no idea what happened to him. The neighbor was going to call the game warden to find out what to do with the deer. Hopefully it was a less painful death than freezing or drowning in the pond would have been. This goes down as one of the joys of living in the country. You just never know what you're going to find.